Instead of work today, my coworker, Mohammed, and I had the pleasure of volunteering (for hp) to install a server at a non-profit IT company, Genesys. They hook up with high schools (Reagan) to provide students with the opportunity to work for different companies doing IT work. It's a win-win situation - the contracting companies get cheap labor, the students make money and more importantly, get the experience they need to get a foot in the door. Some of the students now have hope of going to college, and have drastically different outlooks on what they can do with their lives. It's great. The place has only been open for a year, and the guy who started it used to be a Compaq employee. He's had this vision since he worked at Compaq - and it came with a cost too. He had to invest much of his own money to get things started. Now, they're funded by grants and stuff from corporate sponsors and the govt... But he had to take the first step of faith to get things going. Anyway, it wasn't anything big today, but it was a super-refreshing change of pace from the usual. What a great day. For lunch, a group of us 10 volunteers, male & female (the others went to different locations - schools, etc. - to install hardware or software) went to the Cadillac Bar for a late lunch. Haha, as soon as we walk in, we quickly discover its a "gentlemen's buffet" - it turns out there are two separate parts to the restaurant, and we definitely walked into the wrong place. Since there were ten of us all wearing bright blue HP shirts, the entire place turned around and watched as we walked in. Then they watched as we look about in confusion, nobody sure what's going on, and one woman in our group is like, "OK everybody out!!" and we all scurry out. What a funny scene it was. In other news, there's now a national do-not-call list that we can sign up for. Freedom from telemarketers. Now ... what about spam?